Monday, August 27, 2007

A friend of the couple apparently said that it was Cuthbert who ended the relationship. However even more shocking than that is the fact that Avery was apparently hitting on Paris Hilton at a party on Sunday:

But don’t feel bad for Sean, who didn’t appear to be brokenhearted about the breakup when he was spotted hitting on Elisha’s good friend Paris Hilton at the LG House in Malibu on Aug. 26. A partygoer tells OK!, “When you asked Sean where Elisha was he shrugged his shoulders and said they had broken up.” But for all his attempts at wooing the recent jailbird, Sean was not able to convince Paris to leave with him, saying she wouldn’t do that to Elisha and walked away.

Avery and Paris?!? I couldn’t even fathom the thought. I don’t even want to think about it. Ugh.

Hilary and fresh boy toy Mike Comrie were spotted having a romantic dinner last night at Giorgio Baldi restaurant in Santa Monica. Try the veal cutlet! Comrie is the center for the New York Islanders hockey team, but his “net worth” doesn’t stop there; the Canadian pucker comes with quite a wad of cash—as heir to the Brick Warehouse fortune (which is Canada’s version of Sears). Score!

The Canadians then get mad about the Brick Warehouse-Sears comparison in the comment section.

So the Islanders have replaced Alexei Yashin and Carol Alt with Mike Comrie and Hillary Duff? It’s a PR dream, no doubt.

Forget about Comrie vs Sean Avery during Islanders-Rangers games, I’m thinking the public would much rather see Duff vs Avery’s gal-pal Elisha Cuthbert.

Thursday, February 15, 2007

On my way to the gym, I listened to Pierre Page and Christian Tetrault (Radio-Energie) and it was 5:48am and Page said that he learn from one source that there was a fight in the Habs dressing room Saturday night, after the game, and it led to the players-only meeting.

Another user on hfboards wrote that the other player is Sheldon Souray, but there’s no other source for it yet.

More to come on that I’m sure. Montreal eats this stuff up.

Update 430pm:Alanah sends over the link to the TSN story. Nothing new in there yet, but TSN will most likely look into the rumors and confirm or squash them.

Some reports out of Montreal indicate Sheldon Souray and Alexei Kovalev started the screaming match. It’s not certain if the two were yelling at each other, but these two have a history. You might remember Game 4 of the 2004 first-round series between the Canadiens and the Bruins. Kovalev gave up on the puck when slashed in overtime, Glen Murray picked it up and scored the winner. Boston went up 3-1 in the series. Immediately afterward, Souray ripped Kovalev publicly.

Not sure about you, but I don’t like the imbalance, or lack of symmetry, inherent in 8 and 7. A seven-team division is just aching to be turned into a matching eight-team division, and if we learned anything in the NHL’s ever-expanding ‘90s, it was that bigger is definitely not better.

We don’t need a 32-team NHL.

In fact, we don’t need a 30-team NHL. There just aren’t enough NHL-caliber players to stock the existing NHL teams (no calculator necessary).

Reading into things, the first hint might have come up during all the Penguins relocation stories a month ago.

When Jim Balsillie was making an offer to buy the Penguins some got their hopes up that another NHL franchise could start making HNIC appearances. The NHL had other ideas and Balsillie backed out when the league wanted to add extra conditions into his contract with the league.

The league was and is doing whatever they can to keep the team in Pittsburgh, something many wish the league would have done with Quebec City, Winnipeg, Hartford and the original Minnesota franchise.

Despite the league’s efforts, the Penguins may relocate. Kansas City, Houston, and Portland (OR) seem to be the front-runners for the team. Arenas and market size play heavily into the equation. Winnipeg is usually thrown into the mix, but is rarely considered to be a real possibility. That prompted Victor Chi to wonder, “why is Canada is being written off?”

Some Canadian cities supposedly lack the corporate base to sustain an NHL club. But they don’t lack a built-in audience appreciative and savvy about hockey. And wasn’t the new collective-bargaining agreement sold to the fans as being a system in which all markets, big and small, can compete on untilted ice?

Perhaps his question is really the answer to the expansion question.

Why let any rich Canadian relocate a franchise when he/she/they might be willing to pay some heavy expansion fees instead?

Expansion is not going to go over well, no matter what, but if you expand to Canadian cities, well… you’ve got a large fan base and probably a good chunk of the media who’ll cut you some slack for that one.

Keep relocation in the US, expand to Canada, and your PR is a lot better than the reverse.

There aren’t too many large cities to choose from. You’d have to think Winnipeg would get another crack at the NHL and either Southern Ontario or Quebec could grab the other team.

The US cities will likely stay the same for relocation, and if it’s not the Penguins it could be the Predators or another southern team. Like the Penguins, many of the southern teams have bright futures on the ice. Some city will have an instant winner, similar to Quebec moving to Colorado and winning the Cup immediately.

Could a couple of Canadian cities and some new US locales not just support, but strengthen NHL support across North America? The debate will be strong.

Just as fiery will be the debate about whether or not the talent pool can support expansion. Dupont doesn’t think so:

Unfortunately, what the NHL doesn’t have is the players. Sure, parity can be a beautiful thing. North America still cranks out enough homeboys to keep the NFL, and even the CFL, stocked with corn-fed linemen and ball luggers.

But now, some 20 years into having all of Europe’s doors being swung open, even hockey’s worldwide talent pool isn’t large enough for 30 NHL teams to stock the shelves.

If more scoring is the sign of a more entertaining game, it’s hard to see how shedding the bottom rung of talent would make a big difference. If so many of today’s fourth-line forwards and depth defensemen are mere NHL pretenders, why aren’t the Joe Sakics and Ilya Kovalchuks of the world skating rings around them? If anything, today’s presumed surfeit of mediocre players should mean more offense, not less, while a smaller league would make scoring even harder. If contraction reduces the NHL to its best players, that includes the best defensemen and best checking forwards.

I tend to agree with Fitzpatrick and liken it to watching the NFL to compared to NCAA football. The talent disparity in the college games leads to the breakout plays and high scoring.

Friday, December 15, 2006

DALLAS—The Rangers are investigating the purchase of an East Coast Hockey League team that would play at Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn, possibly as early as next season, Madison Square Garden chairman James Dolan and Steve Mills, president of MSG Sports, said last night.

“There’s an opportunity for us to control the entire pipeline of the players more fully and we think there’s an opportunity to extend the Rangers’ presence,” Mills said. Last month, the Garden entered a deal with the owners of a 25-acre sports complex at the site which has two rinks, one of which can hold about 2,300 people.

Just as I was re-reading about the LI Ducks and thinking how great it’d be to have a minor team in the area again. Besides wanting to attend a few games, I’d think you’d get a few games on local television with all the local sports stations (MSG, FSNY, YES, SNY). You’d have to assume the Dolan/Cablevision owned MSG would broadcast some games, but you never know.

However, a 2300 capacity is low for an ECHL arena. Only five teams average less than that. The lowest being Cincinnati, averaging 1661 a game, the only team below the 2k mark. The Stockton Thunder are leading the league in attendance, averaging 6462.

In the early 40s the “other” New York team at the time, the New York Americans, changed their name to the Brooklyn Americans and planned on moving to Brooklyn, but it never happened. From Wikipedia:

At wit’s end, Dutton changed the team’s name for the 1941-42 NHL season to the Brooklyn Americans. He had every intent on moving the team to Brooklyn, but due to a lack of a decent arena, the Brooklyn Americans continued to play their home games in Manhattan at Madison Square Garden while practising in Brooklyn. They barely survived the season, finishing with a record of 16-29-3. Due to player shortages and lingering debt from the Dwyer era, the Amerks suspended operations for the war’s duration. However, in 1946, the NHL reneged on promises to reinstate the Amerks and Maroons (who had shut down in 1938, but had been sold to Philadelphia interests). Although Dutton had every intention of returning the Amerks to the ice after World War II, NHL records list the Amerks as having “retired” from the league in 1942.

Wednesday, September 13, 2006

What, if anything, is going on between former Toronto Maple Leaf star player Tie Domi and uber-rich politician Belinda Stronach? Whispers of a romance are getting louder but we’re not alleging anything here because we’ve seen Domi’s temper.

Sunday, July 23, 2006

Andrew Murstein, the New York City financier heading their group’s bid for the hockey team, said the group increased its offer Friday, but it was rejected by the Penguins.

The group offered more than $170 million, as high as it intends to go, Murstein said.

“We increased our offer significantly, and it was not accepted,” he said.

There were two bids that were reportedly higher. However, unlike the Murstein-led group the spoke of keeping the team in Pittsburgh, the other two have talked about moving the team if the city does not build a new arena. Kansas City and Hartford were new locations mentioned.